Analyze the effects of colonialism and its legacies on women`s work

One of the most notable vestiges of colonialism in third world countries has been its effect on the life of indigenous women in the former colonies . Whole new ways of doing things were transported from Europe and foisted on third world countries by various ways and means

The social and religious tenets of Europe , which the colonial rulers considered superior to what they met in the colonies , were condescendingly imposed on the hapless people of the colonies with long lasting negative consequences [banner_entry_middle]

. Overnight , age old ways of doing things were uprooted and replaced by ill-suited social and work ideologies and religious thoughts

Prior to the advent of colonialism , women in Africa , Asia , the Americas and Oceania had maintained harmonious relationships with their immediate world – their male counterparts , their families and the environment . For instance economic activities in most of the indigenous communities were not sequestered in the same rigid manner between female and male as was the case with Europeans of that time . Studies on the lives of women in the pre-colonial Yoruba nation of Nigeria show that their society considered the work the women did complementary to the work of men , and some women achieved impressive status in the economic and social realms of Yoruba life (Rojas 1 . The same was true amongst their pre-colonial counterparts in the Igbo nation as Lord Frederick Lugard one of Britain ‘s colonial administrators in Nigeria , described them as “ambitious , courageous , self-reliant , hard-working , and independent [They] claim full equality with the opposite sex , and would seem indeed to be the dominant partner (Bookrags

The arrival of colonial administrators from Europe , with entrenched ideologies of `separate spheres ‘ for both sexes , which were based on the life patterns of an avidly patriarchal Europe , changed the status of women in most of the conquered indigenous communities . As a consequence public policy doctrines and the direction of colonial administration in the colonies were influenced and determined by a male oriented era , thus impacting education , career development and work definitions in like manner . The legacies left behind by this interplay of the direction of state policy and the colonial administrative preferences regarding women gave women ‘s work the coloration that persists till this day in former colonies . These same principles have been adopted and perfected by the owners of capital who replaced the colonialists at the advent of capitalism and neo-colonialism

The legacies of patriarchal colonial policies on women ‘s work

According to Mash early Victorian gender prescriptions featured men as industrious breadwinners and women as their helpmates ) whereby men were figured as competitors in the amoral , economic realm while women were positioned as either decorative trophies or spiritual guardians of men ‘s immortal souls ‘ This line of thinking permeated the structures of social and political behavior and defined the nature of administration in the colonies as Berveley argues

The fact , however , that the post colonial state would have derived its socio-cultural characteristics from colonialism highlights the ways… [banner_entry_footer]